The Legend Of Vraz
The Legend Of Vraz is platform/side scroller video game developed by Zatun. This game was created using the Microsoft XNA framework and features a fun filled EXCITING gameplay of 6-9 hours amidst fantasy worlds created with stunning hand painted 2D art and inhabited by mesmerizing characters.
Game Premise
Vraz the prince is in love with princess Avi and to marry her has to complete the 5 tasks set by Avi’s father while battling with the evil lovelorn Vizier and his shrewd accomplices in exotic worlds filled with dangerous obstacles. Prince of Persia (2D) + Braid style art – blood and violence = Legend of Vraz
Game USP
- A fun, fascinating and a forgiving gameplay providing a unique player experience by encouraging and testing the player’s skills simultaneously.
- Exquisite and spectacular hand painted 2D Art in Indian Miniature Painting style.
- Cute and adorable characters having their own distinct personality and AI (Artificial – Intelligence).
- 14 different enemies and 15 stages with 4 distinct locations and each location providing a feeling of fantasy of being in an exotic land.
- An incredible soundtrack immersing the player completely in the game.
- 5 different upgradable arrows and the ability to control the prince both with mouse and keyboard or mouse only or keyboard only depending upon the user preferences.
Gameplay
The legend of Vraz is played by defeating enemies and overcoming traps in a standard platform environment. The player controls “Vraz” as he jumps runs, ropewalks and fires arrows. Vraz can either jump on enemies or use the arrows to neutralize them and has to collect keys to open locked doors and use levers to operate platforms or start/stop objects.Vraz can use 5 different arrow upgrades available throughout the game. The gameplay is forgiving and game has no blood or violence. There is no concept of lives in the game and Vraz does not die; if his health is low he faints and restarts at the previous check point or starting point. For health, the player can use mangoes, milk cans or the cow which recharges the health when the player is near it.
The game has 15 levels where prince moves through 4 different worlds in the game:
- Jungle world: The player starts from the palace boundaries and moves into the jungle. The initial jungle levels are fairly straight forward with fewer enemies to help the player grasp the game. As the player proceeds to higher levels, there are lots of interactive objects like disappearing platforms, shooting stones, etc and stronger enemies. The player has to collect the Red Rose as a gift to the princess.
- Palace world: The prince moves from the jungles to the enemy palace. The palace levels features a variety of different enemies with smarter AI, interactive objects operable by level, booby traps and much more. The player has to collect the diamond heart and the traditional sword in this level.
- Fantasy world: The player moves to a mystery location where there are ancient ruins. The player encounters the maximum enemies in this level and has to neutralize all the enemies to move forward along with freeing the horse.
- Clouds world: The clouds are the abode of the vizier where he has build magnificent palaces. It is here that the vizier plans to create his new kingdom and then kidnap the princess.
The pace of the game was based upon “Easy to learn – hard to master” concept. The initial levels are fairly easy but as the player proceeds to higher levels, the game starts getting tougher.
Game Story
Vraz (17) is the prince of Thor which is situated between the Aravalli Mountains and Awadh jungles. He loves the jungles, horse riding and often goes to the jungle to relax and to enjoy solitude. One day, he encounters a beautiful girl who is lost in the jungle. The girl turns out to be Princess Avi from kingdom of Kund. He is quite surprised that see a girl walking alone in the forest without fear. He guides Avi out of the jungle and back to the main path. Avi is attracted by Vraz’s modesty, charm and his love for nature. Months pass but they keep on meeting and one day Vraz asks for Avi’s hand. Both realize the difficult task they have in hand since Kund and Thor were once at war. Still, Avi asks Vraz to meet his father, The Maharaja of Kund. Vraz meets Baapji, the Maharaja of Kund. Baapji tells Vraz that in order to win his daughter’s hand, he must complete the 5 tasks to prove that he is the perfect suitor. He believes that they should forget the past and the two kingdoms must live together peacefully.
The 5 tasks are
- Earn 100,000 coins or equivalent gold for the wedding
- Find the biggest and the brightest red rose
- Find a diamond studded heart
- Find the traditional sword
- Find a traditional horse
However, the Vizier of Kund has other plans. He's in love with Avi himself, and realizes that marrying her is his ticket to becoming the future king of Kund, and perhaps the eventual ruler of the entire region. Meanwhile, Vraz unaware of Vizier's plan agrees to Baapji’s condition and the game begins……
The Legend of Vraz – Development
Overview
The game took around 17 months to complete and is inspired from the miniature paintings. The team started working on the game in May, 2008 and for the initial 5-6 months the game was developed using the (Torque Game Builder). Soon the team realized that Torque was not suitable for the type of game they wanted to create and would need to look beyond TGB (Torque Game Builder). The team decided to use the Microsoft XNA framework after looking at various options including Adobe Director, Trinigy, Neo Axis and Unity.
After starting with XNA in end of 2008, the team searched for tools and tile map editors/level editors that would enable them to create our levels. They could not find any tools or tile map editors that would help them to start right away so decided to custom tile map editor and animation editors.
Tool creation
The tile map editor was created from scratch to accommodate various types of tiles and gave creative freedom to our artists. The programmers took references from works of James Silva, Nick Gravelyn and other tutorials on Youtube and XNA website. They worked closely with the level designers (who were also created the level art and level assets) to ensure all their needs are answered.
The tile map editor also supported free images along with the tiles and there was an option to rotate, scale, flip, etc for the free images. They created a tile map editor that supported a virtually infinite number of layers and could also be used for RPG games. This also helped the level designers create levels rapidly which were useful for testing the gameplay. The collision detection system was embedded with the tile map editor and used a custom collision algorithm.
The animation editor was created which helped convert our sprite sheets into various cells with different animations and these were later used in the game.
The team then moved to working on the AI, gameplay and particles. As XNA didn’t have any class for AI, the team implemented a custom class via C#. The characters take the decision based upon the AI engine and each character can take multiple decisions and prioritize them based upon the timestamp based decision system.
The idea of the game was very different when the team started out and the initial game design and game concept was itself very huge. The game had features which would not be included due time and resource constraints like an option to choose multiple protagonists and doing so would change the gameplay; dialogue between characters; 32 levels; minigames and a mentor who helped the player in the game. A couple of experience programmers from Italy and UK helped speed up and polish the game.
Art
Style
The game style is based upon the Miniature paintings of India but it was really hard to figure out the main style as there are a lot of sub styles ranging from Mughal painting to Rajput painting. The team spent a lot of time trying to look for references on Miniature paintings online and browsed through various book stores and museums. Finally they came across a book from a very prominent artist who had adopted his own unique style yet his style was a mix of the major miniature painting styles. His style served as a major reference point and a guiding light on the path we were to undertake.
After the style was fixed, the team did various tests to determine whether to use 3D / 2D characters and assets for the game. The team tested 3d characters with 3d backgrounds, hand painted characters; toon shaded characters and finally went ahead with plain shaded 3D characters rendered as sprites with hand painted 2D backgrounds.
Level Art
This game was based upon an Indian theme. The art for level 1 and level 2 was guided by the miniature paintings. We took various references for level 3 – the palace level from the palaces of Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer etc. For Level 4; we used Ajanta – Ellora and the temples of Hampi and Konark as the main base and build upon the theme.
We wanted to show that the game was played in a single day hence level 1 starts off with dawn and level 4 ends at night. Hence the background and the mood was created is such a fashion that depicts the change in time.
Character Design
The concepts for the Sadhu/Guru, Modo, Durk,Cow and horse were created early on and the initial designs were approved right away. The Princess, langur, langur baby, Soldier, Bavad went through various design changes after being finalized.
Prince:
The prince went through a lot of design changes and a lot of drafts before the final concept was finalized. We also created 3D models of the prince complete with textures but again they didn’t match what we were looking for. Our final 3d model and a revision of an older character sketch helped us create present prince. We looked at various references from Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy, Virgin Ramayana comics, old Indian serials like Ramayana and Mahabharata and the Indian movie Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama.
Mani:
The character design for Mani looked good initially but later on it was redone to make the Mani a bit older and less aggressive.